Chameleon: Being the Book of My Selves

by Benjamin De Casseres

1922 edition. Excerpt: ... THE INTANGIBLE LIFE IFE is a manifestation of uncon scious ideas, a flowerlike exfolia -*-- tion from an unseen, unknown within to a visible, known without, of which death is the rim. The mind, the earlier mind, of man, half opened, as a flower just before dawn, beholding, fearing, this rim--this almost tangible cessation of the activities of the beloved body--reacts upon itself in thought, seeking blindly for something of the infinite beyond matter; dreaming thus of gaining for mental, spiritual intensity what so soon must be lost in space and time; asking, as it were, a concession from Fate by a steady withdrawal from participation in her more obvious empire, the external world. So is the dream born; and from the unmapped territories in the atoms in the brain there springs a being within a being--the imaginative-prophetic soul, forerunner of the Intangible Life, the subverter and sapper of the external world, a thing that shall function in the limitless. To beings so elected--few and unique among those who live literally, the mudworms--the nearest thing is the remotest thing. They are never quite socketted in their environment, never quite come into contact with their own bodies. Extension, encounter and impact of bodily things are not true for them. They stand with one hand upon the door-bolt, about to go forth from their enchanted souls into the grooves of practical life; but they never make the motion that is decisive. Merely they stand there to listen apperceptively, or they peer through the knot-hole of sense at the elaborate rituals of buffoonery. Standing farther away from life, they stand nearer to that which gives life; moving not anywhere, they are everywhere. They are never real in the sense that a wall is real, being at...

221 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1922

About the author

Benjamin De Casseres (April 3, 1873 – December 7, 1945) (often DeCasseres) was an American journalist, critic, essayist and poet. He was born in Philadelphia and began working at the Philadelphia Press at an early age, but spent most of his professional career in New York City, where he wrote for various newspapers including The New York Times, The Sun and The New York Herald. He was married to author Bio De Casseres, and corresponded with prominent literary figures of his time, including H. L. Mencken, Edgar Lee Masters, and Eugene O'Neill. He was a distant relative of Baruch Spinoza and was of Sephardic descent.

Reviews

[Fíona V. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh de Casseres, how I adore you.